As It Was Written Part One

AS IT WAS WRITTEN

PART ONE

Outside the halls of Carmethogon, a methane storm raged with brutal force, ravaging the landscape upon which sprawled the magnificent city of Progamethon. Chief Artistic Director Agjulon hovered five feet above the structured marble floor which lay not flat, but rather worked into an expansive sculpture, an artists rendition of the region's tectonic structure. It was etched out in painstaking detail to represent all the myriad points of elevation contained in its topography. This floor was not made for walking, nor for the placement of furnishings and equipment, fixtures or ornaments. It's primary purpose was to astound, with majestic artistic beauty, those who viewed it from above. Everything contained in the room was hung from the ceiling on thick cables of carbon fiber which themselves sparkled brilliantly when the light of the three suns could penetrate the dense methane clouds and lance the interior of the room.

He hovered in front of a large, shuttered window positioned precisely within the room so as to afford a grand view of the densely packed cluster of buildings and long, winding avenues of spectacular Progamethon situated upon the valley below.

His penjub - the bulbous sphere of flesh which comprised the rounded bottom of every Condmarian body, and housed the electro-magnetic organelles which developed over the expanse of eons to facilitate the Condmarian's evolution in locomotion from walking to hovering - glowed softly with gentle pulses of incandescent light. These subtle sparks of light shone from beneath the ornate robe he wore and back-lit the impressively worked design of finely latticed filigree which decorated the lower portion of his garment. At this stage in Condmarian evolution, the penjub had been refined to the point where appendages such as legs and feet became redundant, and now only sprouted as nothing more than vestigial artifacts, mere lumps of purposeless flesh; well, perhaps not completely purposeless, as their distinct sensitivity to touch had, over the course of time, qualified them to develop into notable erogenous zones for both male and female alike.

As he pondered the circumstances of Cluoman's newly ascribed code, debating in his mind the probable outcomes for what this design might entail, he did not really see the swirling winds churning violently just beyond the window's thick glass; how they were bending the authmithos trees at ungodly angles and up-rooting diodac and routina shrubs en masse. Nor did he note the parade of refuse - roof tiles, metal planks, shrubs, myriad papers and plastics - blowing fast across the city below as they were caught upon the winds and carried afar; or the pelting of methane crystals scouring the foothills outside the city gates, and making a cacophony of clattering sounds against the window pane. The scene outside was mostly devoid of color, where tones of greys and tans prevailed to paint a canvess of foggy sepia sameness, turbulent and worrisome.

"I don't like it" grumbled Agjulon.

"What's the problem?"

"I don't know. It just doesn't feel right. The more I think about it, the more I get the sense that if this new code is implemented, the flow of Earth's progression will... I don't know, stagnate?" He turned to face Cluoman, looking for consensus, but found none. "Sometimes, if we're not careful, our inputs can make the algorithms become rather rambunctious. We're here to steer, my dear Cluoman, not infect. It's not pretty when the algorithms work up a head of steam in the wrong direction, and when that happens, well... you know the difficulties." He dipped low in his hover for a moment and then bounced up and down in ever diminishing lengths, indicating irresolution on the subject. Soon he settled back to the normal height of his hover.

"I'm not sure I follow you." Cluoman was not able to look ahead - to see what branching evolutions may occur, what 'coursing developments' may arise when his code was set in motion. Rather, his focus and expertise was set on preparing the syntax of the code, and tending to the demanding intricacies of the algorithmic pathways which were of paramount importance to their program. In other words, the technical grunt work! He left the more heady determinations for the direction, the outcomes and progressions to the more imaginative Agjulon, or even the petulant Prepotus... when that scalawag found the time to grace them with his presence.

"Stagnate?" asked Cluoman, breaking his attention away from the squiggle of code squirming across his screen and looking at Agjulon for the first time in a while. His penjub, floating above a depiction of Mt Yarolich on the floor, flashed in quickening pace from behind his equally impressive robe. In context to the situation, this meant inquisitiveness to a Condmarian's eye.

"Hmmm...." Agjulon stiffened, debating the merits of his supposition, battling his doubts. He had a keen affinity for the algorithms, a kinship, as if they were nothing less than the tempermental offspring born of his very loins. He understood their deliberations, felt their moods, and did so in a way nobody else on the team could, not even Prepotus. Agjulon could sense how they would choose to react, could decern when temper tantrums were likely to arise, or when glorious fits of beauty and creativity were prone to explode on their Earth World, all upon the input of stimuli, the course corrections, the little nudges of code he and his team injected at key points in the progression.

In another moment, he managed to stamp out the doubts, electing, decisively, to rely on his intuition. This decisiveness touched off a pandemic of confidence within him, and it surged through both mind and penjub alike. Clarity steadily began to coalesce in his mind. "Darkness!" he almost shouted, "Indeed, darkness, Cluoman... this is our problem."

"Huh?"

"Darkness. Evil. This is what will become if we program Hitler to emerge victorious. And we both know how things will devolve if we allow evil to reign. Such a boring, sad progression... don't you think?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Such stagnation! Evil always has a way of stifling the program right to the very end... dispite what Prepotus thinks"

"Well I..."

"Don't you remember what happened when we acquiesced and determined to let Caesar Augustus Germanicus live out his decrepit, filthy life straight on to old age?"

Cluoman scoured his memory. "Oh yes... Nero. Prepotus' creation, if I remember correctly." Cluoman chuckled loudly, the gelatinous film enveloping his exposed jaw structure making wet, slapping sounds which echoed throughout the room. "I didn't think even Prepotus could conjure up such debauchery and madness in a Special."

"Yes... well he did, and we relented to his urging. Do you remember the mess that ensued because of our giving in to his demands that Nero should die of old age?" Agjulon bounced up and down a moment before leaning toward Cluoman to initiate a slow drift over to his colleague. He hovered by his side and peered down upon the lines of code, remembering the utter debacle of having to re-write so much code in order to kill off the fiendish Nero, and so much more so to rectify the calamity of chaos which erupted throughout the coursing developments as a result of him dying of natural causes at the ripe old age of 86.

He remembered how the program, when run through it's paces at that early stage of development, had calculated to transform their precious Earth into a world corrupted by a stagnated mish-mash of evil and brutality. This course was never ending, as the algorithms would have it, leaving Earth's history to sustain in this way, this uninspired, stark, living hell kind of way, which held right to the conclusion of the program. A failure by any means, as far as Agjulon was concerned, where none of the presumed intrinsic artistry and colorful creativity of the little humans could take root and blossom - the very outcome for which the project was commissioned by the Carmethogon in the first place, was it not? At least that's how Agjulon understood it. And if he was mistaken about that, or had subconsciously deluded himself about the issue - as was his modus operandi when things did not go his way and justifications were in order - he knew quite right that that's exactly why it should have been commissioned. He simply would not, could not, see it any other way. In his heart, he felt strongly that this project, this program, must up-lift one's spirit, must be a shining beacon of grace and beauty; where Love overcame, and Peace would hold sway upon the Earth at the completion of the algorithms final cycle. Prepotus may not agree, and Agjulon was really only left to guess at the desires of the Carmethogon's elders. But Master Sencious, the team's leader, was a Condmarian whom Agjulon felt shared his views for the most part, someone he felt, at the very least, he could influence.

Prepotus' Nero, thought Agjulon, was one who's code should never have been compiled as a 'Special', but rather should have been left to the algorithms to adjust his life as a 'Lemming'. Or, at least, when they determined to inject Prepotus' horror into the program as a Special, he should have been coded to be struck down in his relative youth, to commit suicide, as Agjulon had recommended from the beginning, the very coding which they eventually had to returned to.

"Good Codec, do I remember!" Cluoman grimaced. His penjub bobbled from side to side. "We had to go all the way back to that Homo Erectus female... what was her name?"

"Lucy."

"Yes, that's right. All the way back to little Lucy to straighten out the accrued coursing developments necessary for leading to an old, lecherous Emperor Nero. My Codec, the amount of work Master Sencious put me through to fix that mess was beyond the pale of cruelty. I must have aged twenty zones by the time my frazzled mind worked out the re-write." Cluoman looked up at Agjulon who bobbed up and down beside him, looking far away in thought as he sunk a finger into the gel at his cheek. "...and you were no help, Agjulon. I can't forget how stridently you urged Sencious to defunct Prepotus' Nero. I remember hovering there, sweating at the prospect of all that work. My brain began to go numb with grief when I determined the extent of work the re-write would entail... and all of it laid in my lap, thank you very much."

"Come now, Cluoman... who was it who sat up nights with you, assisting you, gathering your meals, cleaning your gel emissions and consolidating your code?" Agjulon said, still poking at his slimy chin and speaking with only half his brain, for he was far more concerned with the algorithms.

"Granted. But still..."

"And who presented you with the lovely Gestina, to comfort your aching penjub?"

"Ah yes... my sweet Gestina. No one could attend to my leg nodules quite the way she could," he glowed from jaw to penjub, remembering the high hover and elongated penjub of his favorite whore. But not for long. "Ahem... but still, Agjulon, you caused me much grief by leaning on the Master the way you did to make those changes. Sometimes I think you all take me for granted."

Agjulon's hand dropped away from his cheek, dripping gel from his jaw onto the river Lukomon flowing through fertile valleys below him, his reverie broken. "Cluoman, do you not remember the progressions? Do you not remember how sad and stagnant, how very dark and uninspired the coursing developments became as the algorithms began to shit out those boring, demonically bent cycles ... all because of that insipid Prepotus' Special? Nero... what an abomination!" He wisked away from Cluoman back to the window where the dreary conditions out of doors better suited his mood.

"Well... yes. But..."

"But nothing. Direct your ire at Prepotus, not me."

Cluoman knew Agjulon was a sensitive sort. It came with the territory of being one of the artistic forces behind the project. And while he also respected Prepotus for his vast imagination and his technical understanding of how the algorithms tended to flow, it was Agjulon who Cluoman looked to ultimately for guidence... and friendship.

"Calm yourself, my friend," cooed Cluoman. "I think I'm beginning to understand what you're saying about this darkness issue. Luckily, I have not made any kind of extensive progress into the code of a victorious Third Reich. Actually, I'm glad you have caught this as soon as you have. The re-write should be rather painless in comparison... I think.

But... the Allies? Don't you envision problems in coding their victory? For we've made Hitler very powerful indeed! His Wehrmacht is eating up Europe, if I recall our latest test run of this module... and Prepotus has developed quite a few Specials in Hitler's scientific roster. They're bound to develop exceedingly powerful weapons which will cause problems for us if we determine to code an Allied victory."

"Don't you think my Specials have any merit, dear Cluoman? After all, I've given you Patton and Eisenhower to play with. It should be second nature for you to tinker with their algorithms and afford them with sufficient means to overcome... no?"

"Hmm..." Cluoman looked at Agjulon with admiration. "Well, my friend, come to think of it, you have out done yourself with the Patton Special... such a mean 'son of a bitch'." Cluoman loved using the colloquialisms generated by the algorithms as jargon for the Lemmings and Specials in their program. "But what of the impressive skill quotient we've programmed into the Wehrmacht's Battle Lemmings... to say nothing of the Specials we've added to their General Staff. Prepotus' Rommel is an unrelenting force!"

Agjulon's hand returned to the goo at his jaw, his penjub strobing the distinct pattern of excitement. "Just send in the Russians... we'll kill him with numbers, if nothing else." Now Agjulon's penjub changed from soft yellow to pastel blue, and glowed smartly as he hovered with prideful abandon. Sometimes, his brilliance amazed even himself.

Cluoman began to fret again about the impending work load, as algorithmic calculations and formulae and symbols began to churn within the machinations of his remarkable mind. "We mustn't forget the Japanese, Agjulon. Remember, they're Master Sencious' work. A fearsome force, that bunch... you remember our test run of Iwo, don't you?"

"Let me think on that, my dear Cluoman. I've been working on a certain Special whom I think we may be able to implement at this juncture. I've named him Oppenheimer... Robert Oppenheimer. He's with the Americans, and he tinkers with atoms..."





To be continued...